Earth Day might be the most informal of our nation’s holidays. This weekend Future Fest is on in Anacortes. Special days are times to reflect on the work of our fore-parents, those that have gone before, taking chances and making stands for our own good, today.

The success of the environmental movement rests in the hard work of people insisting on the primacy and permanence of place – their homes, their communities, their hills, their shores, their fishing grounds – in going toe-to-toe against the established order and saying NO, over and over again, until we and our neighbors have stared down, worn down and defeated corporate and statist plans for high tech futures of “too cheap to meter” or Atlantic salmon fish farms.

Long-term La Connerites will remember that they stood shoulder to shoulder: farmers, fishermen, artists, teachers, students, Natives, hippies and hanger-oners and finally, after years of effort, “in 1979 Skagit County voters forced Puget Power to” abandon their plans for nuclear power plants here, in the Magic Skagit. That is from a 1980s New York Times article.

The bigger, better future is a pipe dream of oil and coal interests, of the pump it out and dig it up before it is gone school. But believe this: when the fossil fuel runs out, we will be gone, too: too hot, burned over, flooded, choked, sickened and poisoned, a dystopian novel come to life.

We have to come to believe, and live, that small is beautiful, that less is more, that we are beautiful and successful just as we are, that our stake in this place is about this place, and not the stuff, not the material possessions, not the size or number of our garages or boats.

It is time to put that hard headed American practicalism to work. Consider: Skagit County’s 1900 population was 14,000. In 2010 it was 117,000; projections are for the population to double by 2060. For this reason alone, everyone needs to be a dedicated, indeed radical, conservationist.

Just as the power elites were dragged kicking and screaming into a non-nuclear future, our fossil fuel addicted leaders will have to be forced to go cold turkey, for the common good. Consider that term: the common good. Oil in Alaska or coal in King County only serves the common good if it stays in the ground. Pumped out or dug up, it becomes worse than heroin in our veins: it warms the air, contributes to forests burning, is a catalyst for intensifying hurricanes and tsunamis.

Now, a chance to say yes: Initiative 1631, the Protect Washington Act. Promoters wrap themselves in future generations of children and promise to “quickly and effectively reducing pollution and addressing its negative impacts.” The established order will claim that a carbon tax is going to increase the price of gas, electricity, heating oil and other fossil fuels. They are right. It will.

In plain terms: A pollution reduction fee will be levied and collected on large emitters based on the carbon content of fossil fuels and electricity,

Sign the petition or don’t. Supporters are working to place it on this November’s ballot. If voters approve it, the next decade will be more different than this one. But then, every decade is different. This is an opportunity to start the move into a more civilized, sane, sustainable future. We can all live there.